Factual America

We live under the spell of big data. We give the big tech firms access to our personal data and they shape our lives without us even knowing it. This includes how we choose our leaders.   Award-winning directors and producers Jehane Noujaim and Karim Amer join us to discuss their film The Great Hack , released by Netflix last year. The Great Hack observes the actors in the Facebook-Cambr...

Raise Hell: The Life & Times of Molly Ivins is a documentary that chronicles the career of the acclaimed Texas columnist and journalist. Molly was nominated multiple times for the Pulitzer Prize for her commentary, and her Texas twang became an unlikely voice of liberal America.  Now 13 years after Molly’s untimely death, award-winning director and producer, Janice Engel, brings Molly’s acerb...

Today we're talking about Horton Foote (1916-2009), the award-winning playwright and screenwriter. In the recently released documentary Horton Foote: The Road to Home , the celebrated screenwriter Anne Rapp helps us to learn more about this unsung Texas and American legend. Foote was born and raised in Wharton, Texas, and he went on to become a Pulitzer Prize winning playwright, the winner of two...

Chuck Berry (1926-2017) was the original King of Rock and Roll. That is according to Jon Brewer, and being referred to as 'God of rock docs,' he should know. Jon discusses Chuck Berry and the making of his documentary about the American icon. The film tells the story of Chuck’s life through the lens of his relatives and friends, and also uses dramatic reenactments of certain situations Chuck Berry...

On a daily basis, we are inundated with more bad news about the environmental catastrophe caused by climate change, unfolding in front of our very eyes. But is it too late? Can anything really be done? It's enough to make us give up. Many of us have. But a simple solution may be literally underneath our feet, according to the Netflix documentary Kiss the Ground from award-winning filmmakers Josh a...

On August 11th 2014, the world was shocked to find out that Robin Williams had died by suicide. For someone who brought so much humour to the world, it was a tragic, traumatic end. But no one knew how much more there was to the story. Left to speculate on Robin’s motives, the media circus spun out of control, leaving the public in the dark about a complicated and obscured truth. Robin, bright, fun...

Today is a special US presidential election edition of Factual America . Americans are heading to the polls. Will they re-elect Donald Trump? Or will they opt for a change and vote for Joe Biden? We can’t say either way with any certainty. What we can say is that America is a polarised society. And whatever the result, the politics of division are here to stay, so it seems. That division and polar...

The singing career of Linda Ronstadt spanned five decades. A versatile and talented artist, she has won ten Grammys, three American Music Awards, two Academy of Country Music Awards and an Emmy. Along the way, she recorded the biggest selling foreign language album of all time. Now retired from singing, Linda continues to give back to the community, as captured by award-winning director and produc...

Sir David Attenborough is a broadcast legend. And probably no individual has seen more of the Earth’s wilderness in his illustrious nearly 70-year career. That makes him the perfect witness to the devastating changes afflicting our planet. In David Attenborough: A Life On Our Planet (2020), which premiered on Netflix, co-director Keith Scholey of Silverback Films and producer Colin Butfield of the...

America is a land of natural beauty and natural resources. Unfortunately, these too often come into conflict. Never was this more true when it comes to America’s 640 million acres of public lands. Filmmakers David Byars and Jeremy Rubingh document the fight to protect America’s public lands for future generations in their film Public Trust which recently premiered on YouTube with tremendous succes...

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg passed away on September 18, 2020. She had a long and illustrious career as an advocate for gender equality, a jurist and most famously as an Associate Justice on the United States Supreme Court. Joining us to pay tribute to this true American icon is Julie Cohen, together with Betsy West, the co-director and co-producer of RBG. RBG is a documentary that beautifully cap...

Action Park in Vernon, New Jersey was straight out of a Gen X teenager’s dream. The R-rated version of a John Hughes film, or as Jason Bailey at the New York Times puts it, “a rule-free stew of dangerous rides, teen guests, teen employees, raging hormones, 80s-style machismo, and booze”. But for all the nostalgia, the place comes with bad memories for those whose loved ones were seriously injured,...

When we think of Texas, we think of wide open spaces, ranches, rugged individualism, the Wild West, and invariably cowboys. But where do women fit into this mix? In their film Good Ol Girl , Sarah Brennan Kolb and Kyle Kelley put this question into the context of present-day Texas. The film tells the stories of three young modern-day Texan cowgirls, and explores the role of women in cowboy culture...

America is famous for its sports franchises and rabid fans. However, there is one group of Americans for whom sports raise painful memories. These are the Native Americans. At least some people are trying to put an end to racial stereotyping in US sports. And they have already succeeded in changing the name of the Washington Football Team. Aviva Kempner is the award-winning director of successful...

Michael Jordan is the greatest basketball player of all time. He may also be America’s first black cultural icon, blazing a trail for other African American athletes like LeBron James. Besides his performance on the court, Jordan rocketed to fame on the back of a clever and innovative marketing campaign to sell sneakers, and a shrewd business model that made him a billionaire. However, has success...

In our final episode of Season One, we’re joined by John Lewis, aka Badass Vegan. John’s upcoming documentary, They’re Trying to Kill Us , touches on so many of the issues that we’ve looked at this year on the podcast – factory farming, race and Big Pharma, just to name a few – but this time through the unique lens of hip hop. They’re Trying to Kill Us explores the connections between diet, povert...

The history of jazz dance is the history of America. That history is not well documented, however, especially when it comes to the leading role played by African Americans. In Uprooted: The Journey of Jazz Dance , filmmakers Khadifa Wong and Zak Nemorin trace jazz dance back to its roots in Africa, and follow its evolution up to the present. Along the way Khadifa and Zack address difficult subject...

For those of us who grew up in the 1980s and 90s, the arcade was a home away from home. And most likely we were playing a video game that was the creative genius of a scrappy group of renegade designers in Chicago. In his film Insert Coin (2020), director Josh Tsui captures what it was like for the fellows at Midway Games to revolutionize the video game industry. And along the way, Josh perfectly...

What is it about old abandoned buildings that can be so compelling and alluring? We find out today as we welcome filmmakers Jake Williams and John Shaw to the podcast. Their film Closed For Storm is about a theme park left for ruin in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina 15 years ago. Closed For Storm shows Six Flags New Orleans in its glory days and current state of abject dereliction. Along the wa...

The US is a nation of immigrants. And there’s no better example of this than Hamtramck, Michigan, America’s first Muslim-majority city. No bigger than two square miles, Hamtramck is home to a myriad of nationalities and ethnic groups. Over 30 different languages can be heard on its streets. Using a city government election as a backdrop, producers and directors Justin Feltman and Razi Jafri eloque...

In 1976, Sylvester Stallone was a struggling actor with a big dream and the courage of his convictions. That dream became Rocky , one of the most iconic films of all time. Using home movies shot mostly by the director John Avildsen, director and producer Derek Wayne Johnson perfectly captures the moment when Sylvester Stallone became a superstar. 40 Years of Rocky: The Birth of a Classic , as it i...

In the late 1950s, doo-wop music took America by storm. And its legacy lasts to this day in the music of such recording artists as Bruno Mars and Meghan Trainor.  Award-winning director and producer Brent Wilson is shining a light on this genre of pop music . Using original interviews with doo-wop recording artists, and those they influenced, Brent’s documentary Streetlight Harmonies perfectl...

In the 1970s Camp Jened was not just any old summer camp in the Catskills. Hippy values, the Grateful Dead and pot smoking shaped this utopia for teens with disabilities.   Before long, a generation of summer campers with disabilities became a social movement that soon changed the world. We welcome Jim LeBrecht and Nicole Newnham, co-directors of the Netflix documentary Crip Camp , to th...

Stewart Brand has been at the forefront of multiple societal trends since the 1960s, and now he’s trying to bring back the woolly mammoth and other species from extinction.  Is this folly or is he once again ahead of the curve?  Stewart might just be one of the most influential people that none of us have heard of.  He traveled around with the novelist Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranks...

Baywatch was a 1990s phenomenon well ahead of its time, going ‘viral’ long before there was something called social media.  Director and producer Matt Felker is an acclaimed observer of pop culture and social media trends. As a result, Matt is making a documentary that takes a serious look at Baywatch – a show that still resonates with a global audience 20 years later.  Recently, Factual...